


all the stars bend over sideways

by courfeyrock



Category: Spring Awakening - Sheik/Sater
Genre: Canon Divergence, Gen, i just want moritz to be happy pls help, you all probably know by now how much i love moritz and ernst as friends
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-25
Updated: 2015-05-25
Packaged: 2018-04-01 06:42:37
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,092
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4009810
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/courfeyrock/pseuds/courfeyrock
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The isolation is engulfing—it is as constant as the wind whipping his skin and as loud as the smack his father’s hand made when it connected with his cheek.</p>
            </blockquote>





	all the stars bend over sideways

**Author's Note:**

> the title is from a comet on it's way, a song originally in spring awakening that the bitch of living replaced. it's kinda my jam right now.

Moritz Stiefel has never felt so alone in his life. The isolation is engulfing—it is as constant as the wind whipping his skin and as loud as the _smack_ his father’s hand made when it connected with his cheek.

Sweat from Moritz’s quivering hands creates a thin layer of dampness on the cold metal barrel of the gun. 

_You are not afraid,_ he tells himself. _You cannot be afraid._

He has arrived. He looks around, drinking in cool grass and the shifting trees—the clearing that he has such fond childhood memories from is barely recognizable. His last place of solace is gone.

Moritz’s head throbs in time with the hammering of his heart—he wishes he wasn’t so nervous. It would all be easier if he wasn’t so nervous.

He tells himself that he wants to die, that he must die because there is simply _no other way out._ He has no one.

Melchior had seemed as distant as a whisper when Moritz had tried, choking on his words to say what was wrong. Melchior, who had always noticed even the slightest thing wrong with Moritz, said nothing while Moritz drowned in a sea of sorrows too deep to see to the bottom of.

Mrs. Gabor, the woman Moritz had always wished was his mother, had flat out denied him help, and ignored his final plea—his final attempt at getting out of this. 

Moritz is agonizingly, irrevocably alone.

But then there is Ilse. Her voice is like honey melting into his skin and making its way into his veins—for a moment he can see it—a future in which he may have someone to lessen the void of darkness inside of him. His eyes are like stars as he imagines it—and he decides that maybe he doesn’t need to die, maybe—

Moritz meets her eyes and sees the anguish in them. Deeper and blacker than his, her pain stretches down to her core—and he realizes that her life must not be as beautiful as she is letting on. Her voice breaks and Moritz’s reality crashes down around him, pulling him back under and leaving him gasping for air.

“Come with me,” she whispers, her smile fading, her eyes widening to reveal the tears in them.

“I wish I could,” he says, and he does, he really does, but he would, he knows, only add more sorrow to her life, and he does not wish to lengthen his own.

Ilse stares at him for a beat before moving into the night. She is gone in an instant and Moritz’s eyes instantly dampen.

“For the love of God,” he cries. “All I had to do was say yes!”

He could have lived. He could have reversed the cutting feeling set deep into his bones but instead, everything is as it was before except this time the stars have gone away—have left with Ilse.

Moritz had found a kind of peace in passing under their gaze—and he had hopes that he might be able to join them—but there is no hope of that now.

His hand trembles violently as he pulls the gun out of his pocket. A strange sense of euphoria fills him as he watches the metal gleam under the pale moonlight.

Moritz’s only hope is for a lack of oblivion—he cannot stand the thought of nothingness. He dreams of a place where he can be as free as a child once more. A place where school doesn’t exist, a place where his father cannot harm him—a place where someday, he will see Melchior again.

Moritz is almost smiling when he tastes the metal on his tongue. His finger finds it’s place on the trigger and—

“Moritz?!”

The gun falls to the ground, and Moritz cannot make his hands stop shaking. Frigid air whips around his body and nearly swallows him whole. 

A willowy figure surrounds Moritz, and before he can even move, an arm is wrapped around his shoulder and the gun has been tossed somewhere into the unending woods.

“Ernst?” Moritz isn’t even sure that he said it—that his voice is working properly. He isn’t sure how anything can be working properly now.

“Moritz I—I—please don’t—Moritz, you can’t do this.”

Ernst hold up a lantern, and warm light seeps onto their faces. Moritz meets Ernst’s dark brown, round eyes. He isn’t sure—but he thinks he can spot tears in them. He hates that it comforts him.

“Why are you here?” Moritz whispers in a voice too brittle for his liking. He will never have the courage to escape life again. He isn’t sure yet how feels about that. He only knows that he does not know how he will go on from here. 

“I—I found out that you failed and I—“ Ernst glances quickly down. “If I would have failed, you would have gotten the spot. I—I wanted to make sure that you were—okay, I guess—but you weren’t home, and I thought you might have come back here.” 

Moritz’s words stay lodged in his throat. Because it is so familiar, he digs himself deeper into Ernst’s arm, hoping to disappear into it. He misses Ernst, he realizes, and the realization is raw and biting. They had been so close for so long. It was Moritz’s fault (as everything always seemed to be) that they stopped talking. He had met Melchior, and the friendship was so intense, so all-compassing that Moritz was scarcely able to think of anyone else.

Yet another thing to hate himself for.

“Moritz,” Ernst’s voice pipes back up again, soft and welcoming. “Wh—Why would…? Is this because of your father?” A note of anger creeps into his voice. “What did he do? What could he possibly have done that would make you—“ Ernst cut himself off, and the tears fall from his eyes and roll down his cheeks.

“I’m not allowed home anymore.” Moritz says, shocked that the words are able to leave his mouth. Home is a word that has always tasted bitter on his tongue. “He—he—I—I have nowhere to go.”

Ernst’s hand slips down Moritz’s arm and grasps his hand. Moritz remembers Ernst’s hands as weak and often clammy, but tonight they are firm and reassuring, and they somehow manage to keep him from sinking—somehow manage to pull him ashore.

Ernst’s eyes are soft and begging when he asks, “Come with me?”

It takes everything in him, but Moritz says yes.

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading!! i hope you enjoyed! if you did, i'd really appreciate kudos or comments or whatever! feel free to send me prompts or w/e over on [tumblr](http://mohritz.tumblr.com/) !! also pls talk to me about moritz and ernst because i LOVE THEM SO MMUCH HELP
> 
> (((i may write a part 2 to this? if anyone wants/would read one lemme know)))


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